Bible study By C M White - Origin of Nations

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God’s Glory and Man’s Destiny vol. 3 103.4 translator of this volume T. C. O’Brien!) Aquinas here is referring to this life. But while this approaches Deification, it does not arrive there fully. O’Brien is here overstating his case. What makes this overstatement so interesting is that O’Brien was the translator of this volume of Summa Theologia! He is obviously a Thomist scholar. Thomas Aquinas does believe in Deification but in a very limited way. What is blasphemy? To Symeon the New Theologian it is to deny that the Holy Spirit can be experienced today and that the Holy Spirit can Deify believers. I would not go that far, but Symeon does have a point. Today we have cheap grace. The Holy Spirit, assuming these nominal Christians have it, seems to have no effect on their lives. I heard one of these “Easter Christians” suggest that all regular Church-goers stay home on Easter so he could get better parking! My church has it’s share of what I call “Passover Christians” too! The Holy Spirit should be more powerful than that, Symeon comments: "As it [the Holy Spirit] regenerates you, it changes you from corruptible to incorruptible, from mortal to immortal, from sons of men into sons of God and gods by adoption and grace." There are some differences such as Symeon’s emphasis on deification in this life. But his concept of Deification is similar to what the Church of God teaches. If you had to pick one modern theologian who best expresses the Orthodox Church you would probably choose Vladimir Lossky. His Orthodox Theology is a short summation of Orthodox Theology. Is Deification, to the Greek Orthodox, the fact the Holy Spirit dwells in each Christian? Lossky comments: " ... instead of becoming ‘disindividualized’ to become ‘cosmic’ and to merge thus in a divine impersonal ... God allows him to ‘personalize’ the world" (Lossky, Vladimir Orthodox Theology Translated By Kesarcodi-Watson, Ian and Ihita St. Vlacimir’s Seminary Press Crestwood, NY 1989 page 70-71) The premier theologian of the twentieth century was probably C. S. Lewis. This has always struck me as odd since his training was in English Literature. Surely C. S. Lewis did not believe in Deification, did he? "God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one. I daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather strange at first. But, is it so strange really? Is that not how the higher thing always raises the lower? Another teaches her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does. We treat our dogs as if they were ‘almost human’: that is why they really become ‘almost human’ in the end." (Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity Macmillan Co. New York 1972 page 165-166) 48
God’s Glory and Man’s Destiny Even C. S. Lewis believes in Deification! Further information added March 2005 by CW: I found the following from a famous work by CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, to be of great interest: “We are not begotten by God [yet], we are only made by Him: in our natural state we are not sons of God [fully], only (so to speak) statues. We have not got Zoe or spiritual life [fully]: only Bios or biological life which is presently going to fun down and die. Now the whole offer which Christianity makes is this: that we can, if we let God have his way, come to share in the life of Christ”. (page 150) “The Son of God became man to enable men to become sons of God”. (page 151) We are “becoming a son of God, of being turned from a created thing into a begotten thing, of passing over from the temporary biological life into timeless ‘spiritual’ life, has been done for us. Humanity is already ‘saved’ in principle. (page 153) “God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man”. (page 180) 49
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Bible study By C M White - Origin of Nations

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